The Namesake

Absolutely agree about Circle of Reason: now I think about it, I don't know why/how I DID pick up his other books. Avoid Calcutta Chromosome too -- it's a gripping story but, if memory serves me, there's something dodgy about its plot. THE SHADOW LINES is nice, and THE HUNGRY TIDE. Ghosh's is a lyrical story-telling -- there's something sweet subliminal stuff happening in his prose, a song of the stream kind of thing. But not as powerful, or honest, as Tagore I think [of whom I've only read GORA and a few short stories ...]

Gora's really good, actually other than The Wreck, it's all really good. Trying to get through the Saadhanaa essays (gathered together and sold in a single volume) was rough in parts but OK if I split up the reading. Couldn't read two in one sitting.

Just realized: before I get to Tagore, have a bio of Tolstoy [700+ pages by Henri Troyat] and then RESURRECTION by Tolstoy to get thru. Coz i just finished ANNA KARENINA and had done WAR & PEACE a little before that ['How passe' some may say] and am fascinated by Tolstoy. Expect to be disappointed by RESURRECTION, so maybe I'll do Tagore after the bio and then taste my [Rs 1100 worth] disappointment of RESURRECTION. Am intrigued by how someone who wrote W & P and A K got into R, a little like Newton who made all his great scientific formulations in his 20's, and then spent the rest of his life trying unsuccessfully to prove the scientific authenticity of the Bible [or sumpn like that].

But it's good to have Tagore to look forward to!

What are his essays about?

Actually Newton was already getting a bit older and not quite right in the head when he wrote the Principia Mathematica.

I find Tolstoy to be deathly boring, even more so than Dostoyevsky. The Russians do classical music really well, but they can't write. :) Solzhenitsyn is the only Russian writer I find vaguely bearable, and his most famous material was not exactly uplifting.

Anyway my boyfriend and I have got a great idea for a new bestseller book of serious diaspora literature. It goes like this:

An immigrant Indian or Chinese or North African or Arab or Latino or Japanese family settles down in the suburban USA and has children. The parents own a restaurant or dry cleaners or convenience store or sushi buffet and the children are made to work there during their formative years, and bring ethnic food to school for lunch while other kids are out having fun in their free time and get Wonderbread sandwiches and such and such. The children grow up and as they do, lots of family conflict, a microcosm for cultural clashes, erupts as the children try to make their way through two cultures while the parents desperately cling to one. Then, the eldest daughter falls in love with a white boy or proclaims she's a lesbian or turns her nose up at an arranged marriage so she can go to art school or something and the conflict grows deeper...

...then, killer outer-space cyborg robots from the future suddenly invade Earth, and the family is forced to come together to defend their home from them. The robots, of course, are immigrants too in their own way and a lot of cultural and familial conflict arises as they forcefully implant replication program chips into the minds of their human captives so as to spawn new killer outer-space cyborg robots...but not from the future. And this, of course, creates similar conflicts between the 'parent' robots and their cybernetically created spawn.

The family, as the crisis develops, learns the true nature of cultural schism as the children discover the unfathomable devotion of parents who once seemed distant and the deep cultural ties that bind them together, the parents discover the importance of the happiness of their children, something they can't dictate. And all - humans and killer cyborg outer space robots alike, come to understand the ultimate redemptive power of love.

Hmmmm ... I was tempted to toss off -- 'Great story. Ideal length would be, uh, well I think you've got it just about right here. Just as Tolstoy got HIS just about right in his books'. Hehehe ...

But you know, there IS something interesting in stuff you've written above. I've just finished Sue Townsend's QUEEN CAMILLA ... something along those lines, kinda comic satire ... though perhaps there could be an extra twist: the reader thinks he's come to the end when 'humans and killer cyborg outer space robots alike, come to understand the ultimate redemptive power of love.'. But in final twist, humans and killer cyborg outer space robots also come to understand that the act of preying can be the ultimate act of love ...

I have seen the movie at last. I can't comment on its authenticity or relevance to real indians, but i think i learnt a little bit more about Indians. Little things.

I liked it quite a lot even though i found it hard to know why. It had a lovely after feel. I think this was due to the depth of the parent's relationship. It was beautifully filmed; I liked the parents very much. Daddy was pretty spunky. Not so Kal Penn, for me. His nose is rather large and i really didn't like what he did with that character. For someone who was to become a succesful architect, he was very childish at 17 or 18 I thought. This character irritated me almost throughout the movie.

I found his romance with the white girl perfectly acceptable and was sad for her and him later when it ended. I didn't think she was particularly beautiful but she moved well and had flair.

The sister was great. Pity she didn't have more to do.

I was also intrigued by the french indian american whatever she was concoction. But i wasn't totally convinced by her. I have known people go from unfashionable types to glamorous but its only ever surface. There's not usually a brainy person underneath and definitely not someone that confident.

Actually, i thought gogal most likeable when he was invovled in his relationships.

Perhaps the main problem with the film was that it had too many incidents and so it was all just lightly brushed over. It might have been better to be made more sparely. They could have left out one of gogal's relationships, probably the second one. It wouldn't have mattered too much. He should have married the white girl and then only gone off with an indian girl at the very end as a sort of self-imposed penance perhaps.

Seeing Brokeback Mountain showed me why films adapted from novels are always something of a disappointment. There is merely too much story to cram into a film. The moral is that films should be adapted from short stories, not novels, as was the case with Brokeback Mountain - which was a perfect film. I know, I know, it has nothing to do with India.

Not that anyone here cares.

let's see if she can write about anything other than indian diaspora. meanwhile, who likes vargas llosa?